1 DEA sources: A government watchdog says the Drug Enforcement Administration does a poor job of overseeing payments to the confidential sources it uses. The Justice Department’s inspector general issued a critical report Thursday of the DEA’s use of confidential informants. The report says the DEA had paid nearly $500,000 to a confidential source who was no longer supposed to be used as a source after being found to have given false testimony in trials and depositions. The report says the DEA paid an estimated $26.8 million to tipsters who operate with minimal supervision and without direction from the agency.
2Freezer death: Federal regulators and hotel employees are calling for new safety measures after a worker was found dead inside a walk-in freezer at the Westin Peachtree Plaza in downtown Atlanta. Investigators believe Carolyn Mangham,61, spent about 13 hours at temperatures below minus 10 Fahrenheit. Her frozen body was found after her husband called the hotel to report her missing. Devices should be placed inside the large freezers so that anyone trapped or injured inside could send an alarm directly to hotel security or emergency services, union leaders say. The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration is proposing about $12,500 in penalties for a serious safety violation in the death of Mangham.
3 “Baby fight club”: A former day care worker convicted of child cruelty in what prosecutors described as a “baby fight club” was sentenced to nearly three years in prison, the maximum term the judge could impose. A jury convicted Kierra Spriggs, 26, of Woodbridge,Va., earlier on charges of abusing numerous 2-year-olds by stepping on toes, dousing kids with water, snapping rubber bands on toddlers’ wrists, feeding them Flamin’ Hot Cheetos and making them fight each other. A second day care worker, Sarah Jordan, was convicted on similar charges and was sentenced to nearly two years in prison.
4Parenthood payments: A federal judge on Thursday temporarily prohibited Arkansas from blocking Medicaid payments to Planned Parenthood, expanding her order requiring the state to continue paying for services for three patients who had sued over the move. U.S. District Judge Kristine Baker issued a preliminary injunction preventing Arkansas from suspending payments to Planned Parenthood for any services to Medicaid patients in the state. Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson last year terminated the organization’s Medicaid contract because of secretly recorded videos made by an antiabortion group.
5WWI dog tag: A Massachusetts police department used social media to track down the family of a World War I soldier whose nearly 100-year-old dog tag was found along the side of a road. Randolph police returned the military ID of Joseph Hughes to his family after receiving tips from the public in response to a social media campaign launched by Officer Kevin Aldred. The search for the Hughes’ family started after a resident walking his dog found the dog tag this month. Hughes served in Europe from 1917 to 1919.
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